Why was there so much, and most of all in himself, for which, as Richard was beginning to understand, even a Barbara could not suffice? Why also did her sufficiency depend so much on her faith in an all-sufficient? And why was there so often such a gulf between two that seemed made for each other? But Nature was impersonal, and could not care whether they were made for each other.

But if God were a person, an individual, and so loved the individual!—ah, then indeed!—Barbara believed that such a God lived all about and in us! Mr. Wingfold said he was too great to prove, too near to see, but the greater and the nearer, the more fit to be loved! There were things against it! Nature herself seemed against it, for, lovely us she was, she did awful things! He could but hope there might be some way of reconciling the terrible dissonance between Nature and Barbara’s God! If there was such a way, if their contradiction was only in seeming, then the very depth of their unity might be the cause of their seeming discord!

In such directions the mind of Richard felt and thought and saw and doubted and speculated. Then he would turn to the ancient story—still because “Barbara said.”

The God Barbara believed in was like Jesus Christ!—not at all like the God his mother believed in! Jesus was one that could be loved. He could not have come to reveal such a God as his mother’s, for he was no revelation of that kind of a God! He was gentle, and cared for the individual! And he said he loved the Father! But he was his son, and a good son might love a bad father. Yes, but could a bad God have a good son? No—the son of God must be the revelation of his father. Such as the Son is, so must the Father be—there must be harmony between the two!

In very truth there must appear schism in Nature, yea schism in God himself, until we see that the ruling Father and the suffering Son are of one mind, one love, one purpose. To Richard’s eyes there was schism everywhere—no harmony, no right, no concord, no peace! And yet all science pointed to harmony, all imagination thirsted for it, all conscience commanded it! all music asserted and prophesied it! all progress was built on the notion of it! all love, the only thing giving worth to existence, was a partial realization of it!

Now and then all nature seemed on the point of breaking into a smile, and saying, “Ah, children! if you but knew what I know!” Why did she not say what she knew? Why should she hide the thing that would make her children blessed?